Re: Battery failure

Some practical interesting questions now arise and need to be answered with experiments. The lead one is: was/is the old battery damaged or at least was its performance impaired in the course of or because of its slow (apparent) demise over the two distinct periods of (presumed) decline: first from Nov/Dec last year to 8 Feb this year and second from that point (of assumed death?) to abt 3 weeks ago when the saga began with my endeaviuring to resuscitate the laptop/battery? A while ago I pulled out the AC plug, when the battery showed 100% charge. After 10 mins it was down to 94%. When I plugged the AC in again it ook ½ hr to reach 97%. That has got me wondering. I shall be away for most of the day. When I return I shall first set a number of 'norms' with the replacement battery and then check the old battery's performance against them. Is there more to the events than the mysterious cut-off switch mentioned by thresho? I'm going ahead with this not just for my own benefit but because the results may be of general use for dealing with battery troubles and may underline the merit of having a second (replacement) battery at hand, now we know where the latter is readily obtainable new. Comments will be appreciated.

Re: Battery failure

One thing about lithium-ion batteries, they have a limited lifespan & begin to deteriorate from the moment they're manufactured, regardless of the battery's quality otherwise. So rely on your newest battery.

Re: Battery failure

The old battery [i.e. the one that came with the N100, made by Sony] is now irremediably defunct.The new battery [from Australia - see above, made in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China] is healthy and fully functional; has a 3yrs warranty. As recommended by my replacement suppliers, to get the maximum loadability I initially fully charged and then fully discharged the battery 4 times "to allow it to reach its full capacity". The speed of the 1.6GHz processor is down to a bootup time of 5mins50secs! Probably the result of lots of (hidden) orphans spread around the system. I have therefore decided to format-wipe the 80GB HD clean, repartition it into 3 and reinstall WinXPPro.

The Win7Pro64bit "Help" auxiliary on my desktop machine explains (inter alia) the following about battery care, which I had not noticed before:

Does it seem like no matter what you do, your computer is always out of battery power? It might be time to replace the battery. Every battery has a designed capacity—basically the amount of charge that it's designed to hold. Over time batteries lose their ability to hold a charge. This means that even though you're fully charging your battery, the actual amount of power that the battery can hold is going down.

Some of the telltale signs that your battery is going bad are shorter use times, and subsequently, shorter times to recharge. If you notice the amount of time you can spend unplugged is going down, then chances are your battery has lost much of its ability to hold a charge. Another sign that your battery might be on the wane is that it takes less time to recharge. A battery that's going bad might also cause your computer to turn off or hibernate unexpectedly, even if the battery meter displays ample capacity remaining (70 or 80 percent).

Windows 7 can help you know when your battery is unable to hold a full charge. When your battery gets down to 40 percent of its original capacity (that is, it can only hold 40 percent or less of its designed capacity after it has been charged), you'll see a notification via the battery meter icon that your battery might be going bad. This notification is new in Windows 7—earlier versions of Windows can't notify you when your battery is going bad.

Many batteries will show signs of problems well before reaching 40 percent of their original capacity. Also, many computer manufacturers have programs that you can use to measure the performance of your battery. These programs might be more sensitive to battery problems and should be used first to check the health of your computer's battery. For more information about solutions to this problem, see Solutions to common battery problems.

Some computer manufacturers report the designed capacity of their batteries to be the level of the last full charge, so it's possible that your battery might be below the warning threshold without giving you any warning. If your computer continues to run out of battery too quickly, but your battery meter shows that it's fully charging, it might be time to consider replacing your battery. .

Re: Battery failure

When I started the laptop this morning about 8am, the boot light came on briefly and died after 3 secs. The new battery was loaded and the AC cable plugged in. To check the state of the battery I pulled out the AC power cable and restarted. Again the light came on and promptly died; this time the battery charge monitor at the front of the laptop turned red - which means the battery is utterly empty and is not recharging. Then I took the (new!) battery out and restarted the boot process directly on AC power alone. Boot light comes on and immediately goes out again. In other words: the laptop will not function at all at all with the AC power on and the battery out. All this, together with other tricks and tries, spread over several hours. At about 11am, with the battery loaded, I plugged in the AC power cable and, without anything else connected and the battery monitor light on at the front, I left the laptop untouched until about 5pm. I then opened the lid and pressed the boot button - the light came on and promptly went out again. I checked the battery on its owb again. The front light came on red - in words: the battery totally failed to charge even a little. Is the new battery dead too or what is at the root of this situation - a fatal fault in the core of the machine or just inadequare batteries even when new?

Re: Battery failure

Once again the laptop came very close to ending its existence in the trash bin. However, I had other things to do on my main computer. So I closed the lid on the laptop, removed all connecting cables except the AC "wall" power and left it untouched for more than 15 hours until the next day. Expecting to find the machine quite dead, I pressed the start button ... ... instead it booted up quite normally and functioned happily as if nothing had happened the previous day! The battery was at 100% charge; the system continued without a hitch when I removed the AC cable. I monitored the rate of discharge and decided to risk emptying the battery completely to 0% whilst using the machine for some graphics exercises in CS5. There was no discruption when the 0% appeared on the screened monitor but after perhaps 5 secs I plugged in the AC cable at which point the battery promptly began to recharge, reaching the 100% mark after about 1.5hrs. With the AC power connected, the laptop can be used for many hours without problem. But with the external power disconnected, you may risk laptop failure when the charge load goes down to over 40% and then you leave the machine idle for even a relatively short period. Plugging the AC power back in at that point will not resuscitate the system. The battery will appear to be dead and the laptop useless. Even with AC power connected it would be unwise to leave the machine idle for longer than say 30mins. The battery may suddenly lose or drop its charge to 0%, though the Power Meter monitor may continue to show 100%. When you're not going to use the laptop for a while, turn it off and restart it when you're going to use it again. I don't think I shall ever venture on this laptop again without having the AC power connected and the Power Meter showing that the battery has a 100% charge. To operate the machine on battery alone is too risky. But if a 'disaster' should happen, provided the battery is not nearing its replacement date, recovery is possible by putting the laptop on recharge for 24hrs with battery in place, AC power connected, lid down and nothing else plugged in.